nd the proclamation was at once printed in a
popular journal and copied thence into the "London Courier." It is not
difficult to imagine how its perusal intensified the ever-growing
national passion of the insurgent Spaniards for emancipation from the
French yoke.

This spirit was England's powerful ally and Massena's destructive foe.
The great marshal, second in ability only to his imperial master, had
succeeded to the command in the peninsula. The Imperial Guard was the
mainstay of the reinforcements despatched thither in order to end the
military conflict and inaugurate the new peaceful warfare by enforcing
the Continental system of commercial embargo for humiliating England.
Besides the guard there were, however, some of those regiments which
had quailed at Vienna before the supposed approach of the Archduke
John's army from Hungary after the battle of Wagram, by no means the
flower of the Emperor's troops. These newcomers, together with the
forces already in Spain under Suchet, Augereau, Reille, and Thouvenot,
and the remnant of those troops which had been under Soult, were
quickly organized for offensive warfare, first against the Spaniards
and then against the English under Wellington who were still holding
Portugal. The three army corps which were collected in Leon ready for
advance were commanded respectively by Ney, Junot, and Regnier. Their
number on paper was eighty thousand; in reality there were not more
than fifty thousand effective fighting men. By the arrival of Hill's
corps to reinforce Wellington the English numbered nearly if not quite
as many.

For three years public opinion in England had been divided, some
sustaining on the one hand Canning's policy of striving to defeat
Napoleon by rousing the Continental nations and furnishing them with
subsidies for warfare, others preferring that of Castlereagh, which
advocated the sending of English forces into the Continent. The latter
theory had temporarily prevailed. Three expeditions, one to Portugal,
one to Walcheren, and one to Sicily, had been entire or partial
failures. But Wellington's victory at Talavera having kept the
peninsular ports open to English trade, his older brother, Lord
Wellesley, who was now secretary for foreign affairs in the new
cabinet, and who ardently believed that thus alone could England win,
managed continuously to reinforce the army in Portugal until at last
it was strong in numbers and efficient as a fighting machine.

F